Monday, October 20, 2008

Polar Endorsements

On the other side Obama got endorsed by Ken Adelman. The name won't mean anything to you unless you are a real political junkie, but Adelman is no "moderate" Republican. He is as hawkish and conservative as they come.

Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.

What Adelman said:

When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.

I asked Adelman whether Iraq had turned him against his party and thus McCain. No, he said, McCain’s criticisms of Rumsfeld and the handling of the war had made him admire McCain more, not less. But Adelman added:

The Republican handling of the war made me value “experience” far less. If Cheney, Rumsfeld & Powell are the epitome of experience, I’ll take the alternative. They’ve given experience a bad name. Further thought: McCain’s campaign soured me a lot. His hiring of the Bush attack squad, South Carolina 2000, made me view this honorable man as heading a dishonorable effort. And that’s still the case. It’s pretty disgusting, what he’s doing…